I think now, more than ever, Christianity does not
have the luxury to stand on its own.

For far too long it has interpreted its place in
history as an independent body separate

from the obscenity of the world. And in doing so
has become the obscene object par

excellence. Take for example that it has itself
been a developer of late capitalism evangelizing the message of Christ as one
for individuals by individuals. Is this not where we erred in our very own
history?

We fled the spectre of religious tyranny under the
guise of freedom and yet are one of the largest countries with the largest
debt? It is because we have stood on our own two feet that we are where we are
now?

Would it not have been more revolutionary for the
proletariat (i.e., now known as Americans) to stay and fight for their freedom
from the oppression of King George [and by implication the shadow of the
monarchy] and create democracy out of the absolution of monolithic power? The
main issue being here, of course, the illusion of individuality that America
has immersed itself in, otherwise known as the ‘American Nightmare’ [Dream?].

Prosthetic America

It has come to believe it has two legs with which
to prop up its own fantasies and yet the fantasy is that it has two legs at
all. Via the prosthesis of history [for Christianity, the ‘prosthetic’ refers
to the Church Fathers and yes, by implication the Early Church itself]; America
has ‘stood on its own too feet’ thereby negating any need for the ‘other’ [the
other here refers to other zeitgeists’ (i.e., postmodernism, politics, ecology,
economics and so on)] – but the same has occurred in the opposite sense where
politics, ecology and etc. have come to believe that they too are standing on
their own too feet while inherently systems can only remain independent through
the dependence upon an other.

They only way Christianity can have two feet is to
rely on another system [say for example: politics]. Why do all systems inherently
come with the one appendage and not two? My claim arises out of Jacques Lacan’s
theory of development entitled the ‘Mirror Stage’. The main pivot point in this
claim is that when a child recognizes itself in the mirror [from age 6-months
to a year-and-a-half] there is a split in their subjectivity [i.e., how they
interpret themselves as an individual]. The mirror image is ultimately the
‘whole’ self, and it is just that, an image.

A form of self-idolatry.

From this point forward the child desires to
consume the ‘other’ [in this case, the other is the whole image of self – and
by implication: idealism]. The image here is evil. Idealism is evil. The
whole-self is the promise of something not present within, thereby why my claim
is that systems themselves [if they also go through the ‘mirror stage’] are
only ‘one-legged’ which refers to their pre-imaged selves, the whole image
would claim they have two legs.

In this case, Christianity has come to believe its
false-image. It has participated in the most grotesque act of idolatry – the
idolatry of the ‘other’ [the image of itself looking back]. In a very simple
sense, is not the image also God? If God is the other [i.e., Jesus claims: if
you have cared for the least of these (which can also refer to the other – that
which is distinct from us) then you have cared for me]. God is the other.

Which in the most perverse sense, when we believe
the lie, when we attempt to become the whole self are we not committing the
most heinous act of divine idolatry by attempting to consume the ‘other’? Is
this not also what actress Marilyn Monroe claimed she struggled with, with
believing in the socialized self to the point that she consumed it in reality?
That she believed in the ideal-ego too much to the point that she knew no other
person other than the idolatrous self. This is the true sadness, to believe to
the point that no other possibility can emerge.

The cross is
the almighty dollar

In the purest Marxian sense, is not the cross the
use-value object par excellence? Marx defined currency as an object by which
people translate their relationships through. It was an object that by itself
had no-value, but it was given value through

socialized agreement. It was the fetishization of
the object, in simple terms, the deification of an object to the point of it
being a Big Other [remember, the Big
Other is something transcendent that ultimately forms our interpretations of
reality, language, relationships, ethics and etc.].

Money is a Big
Other in today’s society.

It quite literally translates for us how and what
our relationships should be. For example, most don’t go to the store to have a
drink and chat with the cashier about

their week – there is a specific purpose in going –
to purchase objects for both use

and enjoyment [sometimes one-in-the-same]. Even the
setup of the marketplace is that there is some sort of barrier between you and
the cashier [even if it is just the cash register]. This ‘barrier’ defines your
relationship long before you ever leave your couch to get into the car and
drive down to the store to begin your purchasing frenzy!

But even more so, the money itself acts as an
arbiter of linguistic play, meaning that in some sense money is a language that
speaks on our behalf. It gives us a reason to interact with the other and also
a reason for the cashier to interact with us [i.e., not only are they taking
our money in transaction, but they are also receiving money via their
employer]. Money, in a biological sense, is the ‘blood’ that sustains the illusion
of society actually working.

Is this also not the illusion of the Cross?

Does it not also give us the illusion of the Church
actually working as a whole, and yet out of all of the things Christ could have
prayed for right before his annihilation, he prays for: unity. But maybe unity
is all about not giving into the illusion of unity? For most, the Cross and
crucifixion in the Christian narrative is central not only to the narrative
itself but also their own personal identity and development as one who is part
of a wider community. It is the use-value object [par excellence!] that Marx
refers to and in a very perverse sense still maintains the residual presence of
a form of currency.

Without the Cross some would absolve themselves of
the Christian experience because they have come to believe this act to be both
revolutionary and weak; revolutionary in the sense of overcoming death, and
weak in the sense of the most sovereign divine being becoming nothing. But is
this not a form of disregardable violence
and utmost disrespect toward the Cross as some sacred object by which one
defines oneself? For after the Cross is the revolutionary eruption of life
overcoming death.

To sustain one’s own identity as something less
than life [i.e., through the cross], is this not pessimism in the most extreme?
One of the palpable elements materializing out of Christian discourse today is
that the crucifixion itself is not some special event, but rather the
singularity of the Christian story is none other than discovered in the
resurrection [although, historically,
this is not true, maybe we should disregard this for the sake of this article?!
– i.e., see Dionysius/Mithras].

If we follow this article backwards a bit, and we
re-enter the claim that the Cross is a form of relational currency embedded
with a socialized use-value, then is not the resurrection the event that
eradicates this need for the cross to mean something – and [yes, by implication
this does present money as something we need not rely on], and the more we
sustain it the more we call for revolution – the more we charge the proletariat
with the role as the revolutionary. But even in this sense, do not those whom
some Christians desire to convert take the place of the proletariat? [and we
the middle/upper-class bourgeois?] The more we adhere to the Christian story as
something inhabited by conversion [and translate evangelism as conversion]
aren’t we asking for the proletariat [in this case, the ‘other’, the
non-believer] to revolt against us? Are we not in a horticultural sense,
tilling the soil for this dynamic to appear?

The
disappearance of God and his doppelganger Satan

What if the radicality of the Christian story is
that we don’t need God or Satan to do the work for us? [Hear me out, I am not saying
we don’t need God/Satan at all! It is that we are working as immediate equals].
As one who does film theory, one tool that is employed is Marxist Film Theory.
One nuance of this particular film analysis is the responsibility of the film
critic to watch a movie and remove both the protagonist and the antagonist and
focus on the communal elements of the movie [for in socialism/communism,
revolution is only found in the osmosis of commune-ality].

If we are to be true revolutionaries, maybe we are
then to remove our dependence upon God [is this not the deification of God; is
not God already deified? and so, to deify God, to fetishize our allegiance to a
divine being, is this not to imply that God is not divine without us? – which
is also something to be discussed, this implication does not have to be evil!].

If we take Marxist Film Theory and apply it to the
Torah/Old Testament – then what we are met with is a people group – Israel [can
we also use the word ‘humanity’?] and their divine responsibility to discover
life, death, pain, love, loss, anger, hatred, war, beauty and everything in
between? Is not the divine act to live life without God as the use-value object
by which we translate each other through? Is not the incarnation about a God
who gives up his transcendence and embraces the material self [i.e., God as the
human-self; God in the flesh] in the promise of becoming a better material self
[i.e., a better human; God resurrects not in divine form, but in human form].
Jesus says this about himself [which I take to also be true of all humans]: I
and the Father are one. Maybe the revolutionary act is that we come to absolve
ourselves of the need for systems [is this not the mirror image of wholeness
staring back at us], but rather that what we seek is inside of us, does Jesus
not also state near the beginning of his ministry: ‘The kingdom of God is
within’. The revolutionary act for a Christian is not to become more divine,
but more human.